Area V5

by Louis Philippe Demers 'aims to trigger Uncanny Valley – the point at which humans start to feel physical unease with robotic agents ... The installation invites the viewer to experiment with the enigmatic gaze of disembodied eyes. The title of the work refers to the visual area V5 in the brain cortex that is thought to play a major role in the perception of motion'

Process

by Annie Cattrell 'reveals the body’s alimentary systems. The organs are deliberately isolated and represented using transparent scientific laboratory glass to emphasise the transitory and ethereal nature of life, making physical and conceptual connections between the processes of food becoming energy'

If Not Now Then When

by John Isaacs: 'a personal meditation on the physical memory of the body as its own landscape, as a place of inner emotional conflict, and not merely a depiction of obesity. This fictional and anonymous figure is a monument, a mirror to our current historical moment in which we confront every day the side effects of our overconsumption, waste, and pollution, but are virtually powerless to change our course'

Euthanasia Coaster

by Julijonas Urbonas. 'A hypothetical euthanasia machine in the form of a rollercoaster, engineered to humanely take the life of a human being with elegance and euphoria ... the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death'

Song Of The Machine, a film by Anab Jain, Justin Pickard, Jon Arden. 'What if we could change our view of the world with the flick of a switch? Song of the Machine explores the possibilities of this new, modified – even enhanced – vision, where wearers could tune into streams of information and electromagnetic vistas, all currently outside of human vision'.
Watch the film and read about developments in retinal prosthetics and optogenetics here

Pleasure/Pain

by Annie Cattrell was created in collaboration with neuroscientist
Morten L Kringelbach of Oxford University. It uses data from diffusion and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the cerebral pathways of pleasure and pain in three dimensions

Synthetic Immune System

by James Chappell and and Tuur van Balen. Synthetic biology might 'allow us to externalise our immune system by outsourcing metabolic processes to external microorganisms, such as yeast. Such a synthetic immune system would be tailored to one's genetic predisposition, age, lifestyle and therefore risk and [would] sense and diagnose anomalies in our body to produce and deliver chemicals accordingly'

Human Pollination Project

by Laura Allcorn is designed to draw attention to human reliance on the services of honeybees, which pollinate more than a third of our food supply. With honeybee populations declining, will human pollinators have to do their job for them?